Choir! Choir! Choir! (4.Feb.2018)

Choir! Choir! Choir! (web) is a twice-weekly drop-in choir experience in Toronto. A ton of people show up, get a lyric sheet at the door, learn a vocal arrangement, and then sing it on video. It looks like So Much Fun!

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (27.Jan.2018)

I don’t know about you, but when it comes time to choose a movie where cancer is a strong element in it, it’s a tricky choice. There have been some good, even great, ones (The Broken Circle Breakdown, The Fault in Our Stars, 50/50 come to mind). But it’s a bit like Schindler’s List. You sometimes think I ought to watch it, but I don’t know if I want to watch it.

That brings us to Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, which you know from the title (spoiler alert:) involves a dying girl. Billie and I watched it last night, and I think it was close to a perfect movie. Beautifully written, beautifully acted, beautifully directed. A lot of humour, and plenty of emotions. When it started, I realised I had read the script (pdf) when it was up for award consideration a couple of years ago. Even so, it still held me all the way through.

…served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2009 to 2017. As U.S. Attorney, Bharara earned a reputation of a “crusader” prosecutor. According to the New York Times, during his tenure he was one of “the nation’s most aggressive and outspoken prosecutors of public corruption and Wall Street crime.” Under Bharara, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York prosecuted nearly 100 Wall Street executives for insider trading and other offenses. He reached historic settlements and fines with the four largest banks in the United States, and closed multibillion-dollar hedge funds for activities including insider trading.

And:

On March 11, 2017, during increased national debate about the appointment of a special prosecutor to manage an investigation of links between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russia, Bharara was fired after he refused to follow Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ request for all remaining 46 US Attorneys appointed during President Obama’s administration to resign.

“Stay Tuned with Preet” is the newest subscription in my podcast list. Less than half a year old, this podcast with the unassuming name has quickly moved onto my must-listen list. Bharara has been, as they say in “Hamilton,” in the room where it’s happened. He is thoughtful, articulate, and not afraid of a difficult question. His insights into what’s going on in Washington are informed, carefully expressed, and always worth considering. The show has some standard segments, like answering submitted questions, interviewing someone, and speaking about something on his mind. Recent guests have included NYT White House Correspondent Maggie Haberman, the former Attrorney General of New Jersey, Anne Milgram talking about the Mueller investigation, and former chess champion and Russia critic Garry Kasparov. These are great listens, all.

A couple of weeks ago, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) organisation announced it had found the 50th known Mersenne prime, 2 raised to 77,232,917 – 1. That’s 77,232,917 twos multiplied together, minus one. The resulting prime has 23,249,425 digits. That’s a million digits longer than the previous largest prime known.

That last link downloads a zip file that expands to a text file with the number written out. To give you a sense of how big the number is, the text file is almost 24 MB, which is huge for text file.

I don’t know about you, but it tickles some part of my brain that there’s a prime number out there that’s 23 million-plus digits long. Mind boggled.

Enjoy.

Andy Weir (7.Jan.2018)

Andy Weir rocketed to fame not that long ago as the indie author who made it very, very big with The Martian (book, film), which I very much enjoyed. Last November, he put out Artemis, which is now the first book I’ve read in 2018. Weir has a real gift for a hard science story. The Martian was all kinds of technical, which I like, and the movie has that great line said by Matt Damon, “I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.”

Artemis is just as tech-y, takes place on a well-established moon colony, and combines everything from Brazilian mobsters to lots of lunar welding. Plus, the main character is a strong, female protagonist, which is always welcome.

So, if you liked The Martian, you’ll enjoy Artemis. And if you like a good hard sci-fi story but haven’t read any Weir yet, I commend him to your reading list.